FLUFFERS. A project by FlatPack001 and Robert Johnston inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies.

Invented by musician Brian Eno, and artist Peter Schmidt in 1975, the Oblique Strategies are a deck of around 100 cards, on each of which is printed an aphorism. The cards are intended as an aid to solving creative problems: each of the aphorisms suggests an approach which might run counter to normal intuition, but which over time could lead to a more interesting solution. Eno used them mainly to remind himself of approaches which he would apply to music when working at home but which, under the constraints of record company deadlines and expensive studio time, he often neglected in favour of approaches which would yield the quickest and most reliable results. The cards thus provide a way out of linear, result-based thinking. They simulate the activity of a relaxed mind by forcing the problem solver too attack the problem from unconventional angles.

These new cards, with aphorisms contributed by respondents to a questionnaire set by FlatPack001, are intended both as a problem-solving aid and as a contemporary view of artists’ working methods. There is no prescription as to the way in which the owner should use them: shuffle them, cut them, follow them, ignore them.